“Everybody Stays Hurt”: Armed with Michael Jordan’s Example, Skip Bayless Questions NBA’s Rule Change to Punish Teams ‘Resting Stars’

The NBA recently adopted a new rule restricting the number of players a franchise can rest per game, to 1. Speaking on Undisputed, Skip Bayless had a rather interesting take on the rule. While he seemed to understand exactly why the league had made the rule, Bayless termed the NBA as an “agent-driven” league. Taking the example of Michael Jordan, Bayless claimed that players today preferred to play less as they still get paid the same.

This results in a range of players inventing niggles and injuries in order to skip games. Bayless claimed players preferred to “stay hurt” rather than play too many games for no extra financial incentive. This lack of enthusiasm has led to a number of stars regularly missing games despite being in top condition.

LeBron James has in previous seasons regularly sat out of less important games in a bid to be fresh for the Playoffs. Bayless is obviously angry at the state of the NBA and wants the league to change things.

Skip Bayless explains the NBA’s latest rule change regarding the resting of players

Bayless explained that Michael Jordan had played more than 80 games, 11 times in his career. 9 times Jordan played all 82 regular season games of the season.

The analyst claimed that players such as MJ “were born” to play basketball. However, quite a few stars today tend to be content playing limited games, and want to ensure that they get fully paid,

“Michael Jeffrey Jordan, 9 times in his career played all 82 games, another time he played 81, another time he played 80. So, 11 times in his career he played 80+ games because he just played basketball. That’s what he did because he was born to play basketball. All of a sudden we have an agent-driven league and culture whereby players are saying, “I still get paid the same if I play 46 games, so everybody stays “hurt”. How will this change, being able to tell a player, “you’re not hurt?” Because you can’t tell players that. I have said for years and years, covering pr football, I wish I had a hurt machine, whereby I put my hand in the machine, and you put your hand in the machine. And I could feel the pain in your ankle for ten seconds. I will say, I can play with that, or I will play, you need four weeks to recover from that. Because I can’t judge another man’s pain threshold. The team can’t.  You can’t impose on an NBA player: ‘You’re not hurt, go play!’” How do participation rules force that?”

Bayless then talked about how it is impossible for an outsider to tell how much a player is hurt, or judge the amount of time they need for their recovery. The analyst called the NBA an “agent-driven” league and suggested that players had too much control.

He also claimed that the only way out of the situation seemed to create a potential “hurt machine” that could help people transfer pain to someone else for a few seconds. That, however, is not something technology has been able to achieve, for the time being. While the new rule limiting the number of players that can be rested might be looked at in confusion, it makes perfect sense in the context of the present NBA.

Magic Johnson once told Michael Jordan that he hates the “load management” of the current era

According to Basketball Network, Magic Johnson once explained his chagrin for load management. Johnson claimed that he had discussed the issue in detail on Michael Jordan’s 60th birthday.

Claiming to hate load management, Magic said that players in their era “wanted to play basketball.” The likes of MJ and Johnson looked forward to playing every game, which is not true for current superstars.

Load management in itself was a foreign concept to the NBA for the previous generation. However, it has been popularized in the last decade in a bid to improve player longevity.